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In The Storm

18/02/2009

I was just about to loosen my seat belt and get ready for the exhausting five hour flight from Las Palmas to Vienna, when I realized that I couldn't straighten out my legs. The man in front of me had put his chair down, pressing his seat almost to my chest. I was trapped, sandwiched between the flight magazines and vomit bag and the inflated pillow and blanket beneath me.

Pushing against the seat back, I managed to ease myself sideways out from under, and leveraging against the arm rest, jacked myself up to a standing position in the aisle. I took a step forward and leaned down to my neighbor who was leafing through a pile of reading material. I introduced myself and requested -- politely enough -- if he could move his seat back up just a bit.

Seemed like a reasonable enough request.

Instead of apologizing, he started screaming at me.

'Unmöglich!' Impossible!, he growled back in German. 'Look at what I have to put up with!' He pointed at the seat in front of him, just as far down in his lap as his was in mine. 'Why don't you tell this SOB to think about my situation!' If I would fix the his problem, he would move his chair as well.

Trying to stay calm, I started explaining that the passenger in front of him was not my problem and that he should deal with him himself. Wrong answer. Instead of acting, he put on his headphones. The conversation was over. All I could do was to go to the flight attendant, register my complaint and let her deal with the problem.

This worked perfectly. She came over and asked both passengers to adjust their seat backs 'in consideration of those sitting behind.' Instantly, both obeyed her request.

Nothing like the power of authority.

I still remember exactly when I started noticing that there was something wrong with my eyesight. I was in the fourth grade, in the Dolomites with my family for a skiing vacation. We were returning to our hotel after dinner, walking in the dark, with snow all around, running and laughing with my brother and throwing snowballs at my parents.

As we approached the hotel, the sign for the 'Hotel Rubino' was fuzzy at the edges -- like when you squint your eyes to make a lamppost's light become a fuzzy ball. I told my dad, and as soon as we got back home, I went to the ophthalmologist. From her face, I knew: I would have to wear glasses.

Now, though, in my senior year at college, technology may save me. I have scheduled an appointment for a correctional laser surgery, now a routine operation that doesn't take more than two hours.

The eye is sedated with drops, and the cornea is modified with the laser beam, until it reaches the correct curve and shape. If all goes smoothly, you can leave for home a half hour later.

Even though I am a bit worried about having a flap of my eye opened, and a laser beam burning away tissue, I am also very excited about it. I have gotten used to the glasses and lenses humdrum, but it will also be very liberating being able to go on vacation without having to worry about spare lenses, getting something in my eye, or forgetting my glasses somewhere.

More than a decade later, I will get to see the world with new eyes.

It snowed today, a sudden twisting whirl

Of white confusion, whipping through the square,

A burst illusion that Winter had furled

Its sails and days would soon again be fair.

People scurried by, their baskets brimming

With baguettes and paper parcels, wine and flowers,

Diving for shelter against the storm,

were swimming

Through a sea of manic flakes, the minutes, hours.

Somehow we had forgotten all of this;

For weeks, no chill reminder of the cold